Why Many Connected Retail Business Are Adopting ERP Software

A great deal of a retail business management involves dealing with changes. Customer demands change; product manufacturers innovate; sales strategies grow and develop. Historically, retailers were reluctant to trust their dynamic businesses to static, inflexible ERP systems, but that trend is changing, and there are plenty of good reasons why.

According to the TechNet article, Why connected retailers are making the switch to ERP, the explosion of ERP software in the 1990s was gladly welcomed by many industries, but retail businesses found it too cumbersome and costly to put all of their business processes in a monolithic business management system.

Despite those early perceptions, ERP systems have dramatically grown since then. Today’s ERP is all about flexibility and can be tailored to work in the retail sector with great success. Moreover, ERP systems today are scalable and can grow with a business, even if that business has a brick and mortar shop, an online store, or both. In one way or another, most of today’s businesses are connected, even if they are small, and that means the customer base is larger, the contacts are more diverse, and the inventory is more complex.

Retail shops more than ever need to stay on top of customer data, sales trends that develop over time, supplier information and progress, product availability, inventory cost, and much more. With ERP software, all of that data is collected together and synthesized into a working, productive system. Retailers can then spend less time worrying about whether or not their business process is working and instead focus on how to improve one they actually know already is.